Monday, 31 March 2014

Book number 4 - Bitter

I made a promise to blog every week and of course I've already broken it. But, I do have a good excuse - my book Bitter: A Taste of the World's Most Dangerous Flavor, with Recipes. I am in the last stage of the book's production, which means a lot of careful reading, looking for typos, missing words and mistakes of any kind.
Cookbooks are complicated to put together, often a recipe runs a few lines long so instead of going over a page, you trim the recipe and/or the headnote so it all fits on a single page. Often words get dropped or are left behind so the text is missing a word, or has one too many. I complicate the process by adding quotes and lots of sidebars that don't always neatly fit. As they are my words, I have to be very careful not to read what I want to read rather than what is actually on the page. This is an all-consuming task and I find myself unable to deal with anything else. I have a short break at the moment, but at the end of the week, I'll be back at it. It will be my last chance to check the manuscript.

The book is looking beautiful. The current trend is for naked books, that is without dust jackets. I know some people remove the jackets as soon as they buy a book, I keep my books covered. Not sure why, perhaps because they often all start to look the same naked. Well even naked Bitter will stand out. The cover has a special coating which makes the image pop giving it almost a three dimensional look. (And just what is that on the cover? - I'm not telling although I am sure some of you will guess.) Another special touch, the word Bitter is debossed so the book is very tactile, and isn't that why we love books? Yes it, will be available as an e-book too, but you won't be able to run your finger over the cover and feel the title.

September 16 is the publication date, so after this intense period of concentration the book will be sent to the printers and there will be nothing left to do, except worry that I missed something. I hope to have a copy in my hands sometime in the late summer.

The next stage will be what my French friend calls le service après-vente, orselling the book. This is definitely not my forte but I will be doing a couple of events in Toronto and I hope to be in New York around the release date so I'll keep you posted. If you want a sneak preview of the book watch my chat with Jamie Drummond at Good Food Revolution.